Nisibis (East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province)

The Nisibis region was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the fifth and seventeenth centuries. The province of Nisibis (Syriac: Nisibin, ܢܨܝܒܝܢ, often abbreviated to Soba, ܨܘܒܐ) had a number of suffragan dioceses at different periods in its history, including Arzun, Beth Rahimaï, Beth Qardu (later renamed Tamanon), Beth Zabdaï, Qube d’Arzun, Balad, Shigar (Sinjar), Armenia, Beth Tabyathe and the Kartawaye, Harran and Callinicus (Raqqa), Maiperqat (with Amid and Mardin), Reshʿaïna, Qarta and Adarma, Qaimar and Hesna d'Kifa. Aoustan d'Arzun and Beth Moksaye were also suffragan dioceses in the fifth century.

In 363 the Roman emperor Jovian was obliged to cede Nisibis and five neighbouring districts to Persia to extricate the defeated army of his predecessor Julian from Persian territory. The Nisibis region, after nearly fifty years of rule by Constantine and his Christian successors, may well have contained more Christians than the entire Sassanian empire, and this Christian population was absorbed into the Church of the East in a single generation. The impact of the cession of Nisibis on the demography of the Church of the East was so marked that the province of Nisibis was ranked second among the five metropolitan provinces established at the synod of Isaac in 410, a precedence apparently conceded without dispute by the bishops of the three older Persian provinces relegated to a lower rank. The metropolitan of Nisibis ranked below the metropolitan of ʿIlam, but above the metropolitans of Maishan, Adiabene and Beth Garmaï.

The bishop of Nisibis was recognised in Canon XXI of the synod of Isaac as 'metropolitan of Arzun, of Qardu, of Beth Zabdaï, of Beth Rahimaï, of Beth Moksaye, and of the bishops to be found there', and the bishops Daniel of Arzun, Samuel 'of Arzun for Baita d'Aoustan', Daniel of Beth Moksaye, and Abraham of Beth Rahimaï were confirmed as his suffragans.

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